Small business owners, entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants, speakers, and of course, authors, know that we need to get our writing out on the internet and in print where people can find us. It’s possible that you have had questions similar to these:

“I’ve been doing more writing lately and I would like to have articles published in magazines and on the internet. However, I worry sometimes that my grammar, punctuation, and other “mechanics of writing” knowledge is lacking in some areas. Should I be overly concerned about this? Before something gets published, I’ll need to have an editor look at it anyway. Isn’t that what editors are for? Correcting grammar and punctuation? I’ve heard about using college students who are English majors to edit our work. They will probably be a lot cheaper than a professional. Any advice on this?

Regardless of whether you are writing as an English teacher, professor, or professional writer, we all need to have someone else edit our work. We are too close to what we’ve written and we always need (at least) a second pair of eyes to take a look at what we’ve written.

Part of why we need to be concerned about additional editing ‘eyes’ is because if there are words misspelled in our articles or on our websites, there are people who can’t focus on anything else except our mistakes! I work with super smart people so I know this to be true! So before you send an article into a publisher, you need to have someone else read it and find/fix any typos, misspellings, incorrect grammar, etc. If you are sending something to a refereed journal or to a book publisher, they will clean it up even further if the article/manuscript is accepted, but we always want to put our best foot forward to make a good impression.

There are a number of places where you can get assistance on this:

1. A good friend (who is also a great editor) who is happy to do this for you for free.
2. A good friend or colleague that is happy to do this - and will be happy to have you do something for him/her. Just a trade/barter situation.
3. Someone you hire (top notch high school student, college student, stay-at-home mom/dad who wants to earn a little extra money and will do proofing & editing for you, elance.com or some other service where you can find copy editors, etc.) Just search the internet and you’ll find a multitude of folks who can help you. I would recommend making sure that they are native speakers of whatever language you are writing in, however.

So see if you can find someone to take a look at your work before you post it on your website or submit it to a publishing house, magazine, journal, etc. It’s worth the effort and the minimum expense it may involve.

And if you want additional ideas for moving your small business forward, be sure to consult the Life of E’s blog:

http://meggin.com/lifeofes/wordpress/

Topics ranging from money to productivity to speaking to writing to coaching to business set-up and more are featured there.

And, to make sure you are productive in your personal and professional life, you’ll want to access the resources at

**http://www.TopTenProductivityTips.com

(c) 2009 by Meggin McIntosh, Ph.D., “The Ph.D. of Productivity”(tm)

Through her company, Emphasis on Excellence, Inc., Meggin McIntosh changes what people know, feel, dream, and do via seminars, workshops, writing, coaching, & consulting.

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